For all vehicles, including electric vehicles, it may sometimes be necessary to travel over a bump in order to depart. When a vehicle travels over a bump during departure, it is necessary to identify departure over the bump accurately and control a required driving force to an appropriate value so that passenger comfort is not impaired.
In a conventional method of identifying departure over a bump, departure over the bump is identified when a vehicle body speed of the vehicle is zero and the required driving force of the vehicle equals or exceeds a predetermined value (see PTL 1, for example).
In another conventional method of identifying departure over a bump, departure over the bump is identified when a vehicle speed difference obtained by subtracting a detected vehicle speed from an estimated vehicle speed, the estimated vehicle speed being estimated on the basis of the driving force of the vehicle as a speed of the vehicle when the bump is absent, equals or exceeds a predetermined vehicle speed within a predetermined detection period following the start of a reduction in the detected vehicle speed (see PTL 2, for example).